Karun Chandhok: Ferrari should probably look for fresh blood in the strategy team

Karun Chandhok is the latest F1 personality to urge Ferrari to make changes to their strategy team, who shoulder most of the responsibility for the Scuderia’s all but confirmed failed title tilt.

Having been up by 34 points in the Drivers’ Championship after his Australian Grand Prix win, Charles Leclerc heads into Ferrari’s home race at Monza trailing Max Verstappen by 109 points, his title dream in tatters.

While he is the first to admit he has made mistakes himself, nudging the barrier at Imola and crashing out of the lead in France, reliability failures and strategy errors are behind the bulk of his lost points.

Despite hopes Ferrari would come back from the summer break rejuvenated, and back on track, strategy errors have continued to plague them.

At the Belgian Grand Prix, despite Leclerc facing a back-of-the-grid start due to engine penalties, he was sent out on a set of fresh soft tyres in Q3 to tow around his team-mate Carlos Sainz. Pointing that out to Ferrari,he was told it was a “mistake” but was told to stay out.

As such, he did not have a fresh set in the closing laps at Spa when the team pitted him to go for the fastest lap point – a pit stop that saw him lose a position to Fernando Alonso.

One week later it wasSainz who bore the brunt of the mistakes, the strategists making a late call to pit him and which meant his mechanics did not have enough time and raced out a tyre short.

To compound the situation, a later pit-stop saw him hit with a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release into Alonso’s path.

The Scuderia’s antics have had pundits calling for weeks now for changes to be made, but team boss Mattia Binotto is adamant they are not needed.

Chandhok says they “probably” are.

“Clearly there’s a good design group there because the car they have produced is very fast,” the former driver toldExpress Sport.

“So when it comes to pure design, there’s not much wrong there. Apart from Spa, which is a bit of an unusual circuit, you’d have to say across the season they have been in the hunt.

“Their reliability has been an issue, they have lost a win for Charles and going into penalties and all that stuff, that’s a whole heap of points.

“Strategically they haven’t been as good and I think that’s something they really should be looking at because there are some things there which seem to be going wrong on too many occasions.

“Should they be looking at getting in some fresh blood in the strategy team? Probably.

“If I was Mattia Binotto that’s an area I would be looking at for next season. How do we learn from what Red Bull and Mercedes do? Because they seem to be much sharper than Ferrari and more consistent.

“It’s all well and good winning the odd race, but to win a championship you have to be consistently good. I think that’s the difference at the moment.”

While the championship is all but over for Leclerc, he also faces a challenge holding on to runner-up in theDrivers’ standings.

He is tied with Sergio Perez on 201 points, with George Russell just 13 off the pace and Sainz a further 13 back.

Ferrari are 135 points behind Red Bull and just 30 up on Mercedes.